Schwarz, Fabian

Current Project:

Sustainable bioenergy and biofuel potentials from agricultural crops and residues in Uganda and Tanzania

Biofuel and bioenergy production from agricultural crops and residues are frequently discussed issues in Europe as well as in developing countries. Main counterarguments are expulsion of small-scale farmers, conversion of forests and idle areas, land grabbing, competition between food and fuel. However, providing special conditions allowing sustainable production, both energy sources can make contributions to strengthen the national energy supply and help to reduce import costs for fossil energy sources and CO2 emissions.

Tanzania and Uganda, both developing countries with rapidly growing populations and a lack of fossil energy sources and energy supply, demonstrate huge potential for electricity and fuel generation from agricultural crops and residues. In order to understand the development in the bioenergy and biofuel sector of Uganda and Tanzania, the research seeks to answer the following questions: Which types of bioenergy and biofuel developments in Uganda and Tanzania offer sustainable production at a local level? Which stakeholders are influencing the bioenergy and biofuel sector at the national level? Which differences appear in the policy progress and perception of biofuel and bioenergy in the two countries?This study therefore intends to fill this important gap by investigating two main research questions: Firstly, it will look at what explains variation across space in the nature and intensity of violent youth activities in Africa. Secondly, it will look at how the networks of violent youth, political parties and party leaders are created and sustained. The Greed – Grievances theories and the Selective Violence theory will be utilized for theoretical framework of the study. The nature of the research design is mixed research as it will utilize quantitative and qualitative data such as datasets, multiple sources of information and interviews for Comparative and Network Analysis of the study.